I would consider that children have the right to give away their personal information regularly. They have undisputed rights to write their dreams on pieces of paper, submit them to schools, do show and tells, make videotapes, and even to distribute these things themselves, or allow others (such as a school) to distribute these things on their behalf. They are further allowed to do this with very little information (I have no idea what happened to any project/presentation/paper I did when I was in elementary school, but I would not be surprised if they're kept somewhere on file by strangers, or even shown to strangers as examples). Theoretically, such things may also last forever even without the internet and our control over them exist only theoretically, but never practically.

I don't think the internet provides a new problem here, but just pushes the distribution method to the extreme. If the information is the same, how much must we be told about what it's used for? How much do we have to understand? There's a transaction cost underlying all regulations, and I would bet that even if children were forced to take classes before signing up for facebook/myspace, 90%+ of their actions would not change. The same principles apply to any contract, and that hypothetical 10% would always be screwed, adult or child, internet or papers, taking out a mortgage or signing up for facebook.

-- JakeWang - 05 Dec 2009